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Dive into Summer Reading and Writing

Reading, Researching, Reflecting, Writing, and Publishing!

Enjoy our two Summer Reading series of stories and activities, or use any of our 5000+ stories to inspire students this summer.

AwesomeStories introduces important topics through story. We provide the story-behind-the-story for films, books, historical and current events and more. One of our series examines World War I through various lenses. The other series focuses on films. The two series of stories each come with assignments so that you can use them without any additional preparation. It's not all reading and research-- there is active creative work as well.

Use our MakerSpace for the Humanities suite of apps to guide writing, research, and publishing this summer. It is very engaging and exciting for students to see their own work in a professional multimedia website. Great fun for the summer! To see examples of stories that students have created with research and reflection, see the chapters in the Media Stream to the right of this text. You will see elementary, middle and high school student stories. Follow these links to see more teacher-created stories and student-created stories.

Mold our resources to meet your needs and your students' interests. You can do any of the listed activities, it is not necessary to do it all. Take a look at this infographic for an overview and check out some options below.

During the summer, students may engage in any of the following activities:

Read the stories online.

Read, View and Listen to primary sources.

Read the core story in books.

Watch the core story films offline.

Reflect on essential questions.

Respond to prompts.

Submit responses to their teacher online.

Write a story responding to their reading and research, using StoryMaker.

Submit their story to their teacher for publishing on the AwesomeStories website.

How is student accomplishment measured?Students demonstrate reading, comprehension, and writing levels in their submissions. Researching, reflecting, writing, citing and publishing shows student work--the basis of authentic assessment. Teachers or parents can evaluate student work using rubrics in the grading center if they wish.

What stories are in the summer reading program?We offer two summer reading series. You may invite your students to use one or both.You may also "make your own" program-- choosing any stories you wish or using StoryMaker to create your own stories.

Must the student view the film or read the book?The student can benefit from work with each Story without seeing the film or reading the core book.

When does the program end?End the program at your convenience.

What is the grade level of the reading?The narrative story guides are written at an 8-9th-grade level, like newspapers and magazines. But given the multimedia resources, younger students will also be able to benefit from these stories. Teachers present these stories to students as young as Kindergarten. Some stories have audio narration which enables students in lower grade levels or with reading challenges to engage in the program.

What are the grade levels of the activities in the program?Students from grade 3 up can write stories in StoryMaker. Other Learning task assignments are at middle school (grades 6-8) and high school (grades 9-11) levels.'

What does it cost?For $59 you will have Gold membership for a year, entitling you, your family, or up to 30 students, to use all the premium resources and the MakerSpace apps for one year. If you have more students, you can add students at $2 each.

How can I enroll?Just sign up for Gold Membership, this will give you access to these and over 5000 other stories. It also gives you learning tasks for stories and the full "MakerSpace for the Humanities" suite of apps. Students will love using StoryMaker to write their stories and see how they are developing online as they write.

Just sign up for Gold, then…1. Upload your student list.2. Students get their own Gold account.3. Students read the story-behind-the-story.4. Students explore primary sources.5. Students read or view the core story.6. Assign any of the provided reading prompts (learning tasks)-- as you wish.7. Grade student work when they submit their assignments. 8. Guide students to write their own stories.

* Writer/Director Quentin Tarantino intentionally added a “u” to “Inglorious” and misspelled “Basterds” for reasons you may discover while reading its Awesome Story!

** Though “Inglourious Basterds” is primarily a WW II film, it provides a look back at WWI as well.